I just read an eye-opening article from Newsweek about how poaching and wildlife trade is now being conducted by more 'organized' groups as opposed to local poachers in the past. It seems that these groups (which include those who are responsible for the genocide in Darfur) are now becoming more involved in poaching endangered animals because it is lucrative. It is an easier source of money for them to fund their wars and atrocities on humans.
People (Americans and others) buy these items and may not be aware that they shouldn't be. Ivory comes from elephants. Their tusks to be exact. But to get the ivory, elephants must be killed. Since many elephants are endangered, they live on preserves and protected areas - yet these same protected areas are where they are being poached. These cowards - the militias and other groups - are going into these protected areas and killing park rangers if they must in order to kill these animals. And elephants are not alone.
Tigers are often killed for their believed medicinal purposes in the Far East. Primates are captured - sometimes alive, sometimes not - and suffer cruel fates (including being sent to laboratories where they are tested on). Snakes are poached for their skins (Did you know that in order to make the snake skin belt or shoes you see in the store the snake was skinned alive? Makes you want to not buy snake skin, huh?). Shark fins are cut off while the shark is still alive and they are left on the bottom of the ocean to die so that the fins alone can be taken to make shark fin soup. Exotic animals (tigers, lions, pumas, jaguars, primates, etc) are often caught when they are babies and sold to ordinary people so they can have these cute animals as their own. Of course, just like the rest of us, they grow up and then become wild animals that often turn to their instincts with disastrous consequences for the owner and the animal (I once saw a news story of a mountain lion that was kept as a pet, and when he grew up and scratched his owner - a major injury - the owner "taught the lion a lesson" by cutting off its paws. Now that's a monster of a human if you ask me).
Point is, these horrible poachers are doing this because there is a market for these animals. Ordinary people are providing the market to sustain these atrocities. But in the same breath, these same people say that the genocide in Darfur, for example, is wrong and not enough is being done for it. These same people say that its cruel to contain these animals (wild or tame) and test on them, yet they continue to support companies like Procter & Gamble or L'Oréal who perform these atrocious tests when there are PROVEN and effective alternatives. These same people claim to love wild life and want to protect it but then "ooh" and "aah" over ivory and fork over the cash when they see it.
If we all join together and try to do everything we can to put an end to these markets, then perhaps we can give these animals a fighting chance. Their worst enemies should be those animals who are above them on the food chain, and not the one animal on this planet who is supposedly intelligent enough to know better than to perform these atrocities on animals and each other. That's us.
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